The Top Ten Myths of SC

By Andrew Jones

November 11, 2011

SC11, the world’s greatest yearly supercomputing show rolls into Seattle this week. To help prepare you for the big week, we have put together a list of the top 10 myths of the phenomenon that is SC. With a little discussion of each, hopefully we will bring out the good, the bad, the hopes and realities of SC. And, maybe, along the way we’ll see why SC matters so much to our community.

Myth 1: It’s all partying

Yes, it’s true, there are lots of networking receptions, meetings-over-a-drink, and business dinners held during the week of SC. Perhaps even one or two events that struggle to be described as anything other than a party. But hold on before you dismiss SC as merely a week of parties with a conference somewhere in the background. There will be several thousand attendees, over a hundred technical sessions, around 300 exhibition booths, and hundreds of hours of meetings held in the surrounding hotels and venues.

Before the exhibition has its grand opening on Monday evening, hundreds of staff from exhibiting organizations will have been working hard over the weekend to setup booths and demos. Lots of people will also have been attending tutorials, workshops, vendor meetings, and private business meetings over the weekend. So, for many attending SC11, Monday night is halfway into the week – not the first day – and a desire to wind down with a drink and friends is only fair.

Likewise, each day, people will have had to endure hours standing on booths sustaining extreme enthusiasm for their products, or sitting through slide decks that oscillate between no useful detail and far too much detail, or searching the exhibition or technical program for a solution to a problem they’re not sure they have yet. A sponsored social gathering is a good way to relax after all that – or to engage with more contacts if you are still feeling workaholic.

Myth 2: HPC center directors wander the exhibition floor with $100m to spend

Although every salesperson attending SC dreams of the big opportunity arriving from a casual encounter on the booth, I would bet that most people with $100m to spend have booked up a series of meetings with potential suppliers. After all, if you had given somebody that much money to spend, you’d hope they had a better procurement plan than to simply wander about the exhibit hall looking for a shiny toy that caught their attention?

Of course, in most cases, the supercomputer center directors don’t have the money to spend – government funding agencies have money to spend, supercomputer centers just help them spend it! Some government funding agencies use specialist advisors (like NAG or other independent consultants) to scout the market at SC to inform and plan for big procurements. In most cases, a competitive procurement process will actually spend the money – although meetings with vendors at SC are often used to support that process. But it is very rare that the $100m check is signed or announced at SC itself.

Myth 3: Industrial users of HPC have money to spend on every latest software gadget

It’s a popular hope of anyone selling products and solutions – especially in the niche software space. Especially those who think their niche is the answer to a perceived industry wide problem. Or those in the academic sector, who, against the challenges of sustaining software in the academic funding environment, turn in hope to industry as a promised land of plenty. Industry has untapped reserves of money. Or not.

Often users of HPC in industry are focused in small groups within companies and have operating budgets that would make national labs and academics cringe. Investing in software in industry can be a cultural and funding “adventure” too. The difference (to paint the extremes of the picture) is that the academic reward and funding system is determined to invest in new methods and implementations wherever possible (“research”) and avoid re-use or ongoing evolution, whereas the common industrial environment is determined to avoid investing in new software or major re-developments unless re-use or evolution is overpoweringly ineffective.

I have made these extremes with artistic license, but they serve the point – balance in speculation and stability is required – and software strategy is usually key to that balance in HPC.

Myth 4: Everyone knows everyone

Don’t be silly. It’s often said – I say it too – “supercomputing is a small community”. The extension, “everyone knows everyone” is stretching the credibility though, with several thousand attendees at SC11. But, there is a large degree of interconnection in the supercomputing community and so the community often feels close and small. Within the overall HPC world, there are a significant number of people who are very active and meet many times a year between SCs.

However, focusing only on those high profile members of the HPC world would be detrimental to the overall SC11 audience – many of whom will be new to HPC or on the peripherals of the traditional HPC community. SC must – and does – support all parts of the potential HPC community – new entrants, established centers, high profile researchers, and observers considering how HPC can help them. SC11 is a very social and friendly event for those who are seasoned HPC professionals – but we must make sure those who have poked a tentative toe in the water feel welcome and not overwhelmed.

Myth 5: SC week is the best time to issue a press release

Yes, it is. In the same sense that the best place to exhibit a tree is in the forest. You’d better have an impressive tree compared to the others – otherwise it’s just a tree with all detail forgotten. Each year, SC brings forth a flood of press releases, case studies, and so on. The only advantage to issuing your press release during SC itself is that, briefly, some of the core IT and even mainstream media spare some attention for supercomputing, so if you hit lucky you get a wider audience than normally.

But most press releases will simply be another small bubble in the seething froth of news frenzy that surrounds SC11 week. Plus, so many of your potential audience will be too busy creating their own news or standing on booths or in meetings to read anyone else’s news. Unless it’s big news of course. SC is a great time to spread and collect rumors though. Much more fun than factual press releases 🙂

Myth 6: You can sustain 30+ meetings in a week and still be paying attention to that roadmap detail presentation on the last day

Do I really need to explain that one? See my SC11 diary series for what goes into some people’s SC11 planning. By Thursday afternoon’s presentation, vendor A’s plans to bring out widget B in 2019 with a feature of C=1.00234 rather than someone else’s 1.00235 is hard to focus on, compared to the impending flight home.

Myth 7: The technical program is the most important part of SC11

Not if you have $100m to spend on a supercomputer! Best to walk the show floor 🙂 or book some meetings with potential suppliers and your favorite HPC consultants. Joking aside, the technical program is actually very important. The competition for papers at SC is intense, which is promising for quality, plus there is a wide range of tutorials and workshops. Thus, there are excellent opportunities to catch up on the latest advances in HPC, learn new skills or disseminate your work.

But even the most academically focused attendee should never ignore the other two key parts of SC – the exhibition and the social/networking events. The exhibition can often provide as many gems of innovation as the technical program. Collaborations are sparked by conversations on the exhibition floor or at the social events.

Myth 8: The exhibition is the most important part of SC11

The exhibition can be a hive of activity – at its peak (Monday night’s grand opening) easily the most vibrant single event of the show, in my opinion beating even the technical program keynotes. The exhibition can also feel like a ghost town at times, with seemingly the only people in the vast hall those who have drawn booth duty.

Most of the time it is somewhere between the two, a steady stream of punters drifting or hurrying along the carpets, with eager booth personnel trying to woo them with logo’d giveaways, sweet smiles, or entrapping questions. But, as above, the exhibition is only one of the three important parts of SC – and the technical program and social events are just as important.

Myth 9: The whole HPC world will be at SC

Much as the organizers would like everyone associated with buying, using, selling or researching HPC products, technologies and services to attend, that is not the reality. As I wrote on my blog recently, there are many people for whom HPC is an essential part of their work or toolset, but is not an end in itself and thus SC is not a core event for them. Even within the community of HPC practitioners or researchers, many cannot attend SC every year.

But, against that, a huge proportion of the active HPC world will be at SC11 – most organizations providing HPC technologies, software, services, or research will be represented at SC11. So it will feel like the whole HPC world is in Seattle. And that’s the core attraction of SC – so many collaborators, prospects, potential solution providers, and contacts will there that it is hard to justify staying away.

Myth 10: The best SC11 myth of all …

To be told in person only. Find me in Seattle and I’ll tell you!

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Qubit Roundup – Quantum Zoo Grows, Rigetti’s QPU Play, Google’s New Algorithm, QuEra’s EC Advance, and More

December 11, 2023

While the IBM Quantum Summit and the QC Ware’s Q2B Silicon Valley conference dominated last week’s news flow, there was no shortage of other quantum news emerging. Here’s brief recap of highlights. Let’s start Read more…

Inside AWS’s Plans to Make S3 Faster and Better

December 10, 2023

As far as big data storage goes, Amazon S3 has won the war. Even among storage vendors whose initials are not A.W.S., S3 is the defacto standard for storing lots of data. But AWS isn’t resting on its laurels with S3, a Read more…

Quantum Market, Though Small, will Grow 22% and Hit $1.5B in 2026

December 7, 2023

Few markets as small as the quantum information sciences market generate as much lively discussion. Hyperion Research pegged the worldwide quantum market at $848 million for 2023 and expects it to reach ~$1.5 billion in Read more…

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed its new Instinct MI300X GPU is the fastest AI chip in the worl Read more…

Finding Opportunity in the High-Growth “AI Market” 

December 6, 2023

 “What’s the size of the AI market?” It’s a totally normal question for anyone to ask me. After all, I’m an analyst, and my company, Intersect360 Research, specializes in scalable, high-performance datacenter Read more…

AWS Solution Channel

Shutterstock 1708898095

Reducing Costs by Up to 87% Using AWS Batch with Seqera

Biotech software company Seqera wanted to unlock scale for high performance computing (HPC) while maintaining ease of use for scientists worldwide. Scientists, engineers, and developers download Seqera’s open-source software, Nextflow, more than 160,000 times each month to power their bioinformatics workloads. Read more…

QCT Solution Channel

QCT and Intel Codeveloped QCT DevCloud Program to Jumpstart HPC and AI Development

Organizations and developers face a variety of issues in developing and testing HPC and AI applications. Challenges they face can range from simply having access to a wide variety of hardware, frameworks, and toolkits to time spent on installation, development, testing, and troubleshooting which can lead to increases in cost. Read more…

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of SuperNODEs …
(They did)

December 6, 2023

Clustering resources for faster performance is not new. In the early days of clustering, the Beowulf project demonstrated that high performance was achievable from commodity hardware. These days, the "Beowulf cluster mem Read more…

Inside AWS’s Plans to Make S3 Faster and Better

December 10, 2023

As far as big data storage goes, Amazon S3 has won the war. Even among storage vendors whose initials are not A.W.S., S3 is the defacto standard for storing lot Read more…

Quantum Market, Though Small, will Grow 22% and Hit $1.5B in 2026

December 7, 2023

Few markets as small as the quantum information sciences market generate as much lively discussion. Hyperion Research pegged the worldwide quantum market at $84 Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

Finding Opportunity in the High-Growth “AI Market” 

December 6, 2023

 “What’s the size of the AI market?” It’s a totally normal question for anyone to ask me. After all, I’m an analyst, and my company, Intersect360 Res Read more…

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of SuperNODEs …
(They did)

December 6, 2023

Clustering resources for faster performance is not new. In the early days of clustering, the Beowulf project demonstrated that high performance was achievable f Read more…

The IBM-Meta AI Alliance Promotes Safe and Open AI Progress

December 5, 2023

IBM and Meta have co-launched a massive industry-academic-government alliance to shepherd AI development. The new group has united under the AI Alliance banner Read more…

Shutterstock 1336284338

ChatGPT Friendly Programming Languages
(hello-world.llm)

December 4, 2023

 Using OpenAI's ChatGPT to write code is an alluring goal. Describing "what to" solve, but not "how to solve" would be a huge breakthrough in computer programm Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

CORNELL I-WAY DEMONSTRATION PITS PARASITE AGAINST VICTIM

October 6, 1995

Ithaca, NY --Visitors to this year's Supercomputing '95 (SC'95) conference will witness a life-and-death struggle between parasite and victim, using virtual Read more…

SGI POWERS VIRTUAL OPERATING ROOM USED IN SURGEON TRAINING

October 6, 1995

Surgery simulations to date have largely been created through the development of dedicated applications requiring considerable programming and computer graphi Read more…

U.S. Will Relax Export Restrictions on Supercomputers

October 6, 1995

New York, NY -- U.S. President Bill Clinton has announced that he will definitely relax restrictions on exports of high-performance computers, giving a boost Read more…

Dutch HPC Center Will Have 20 GFlop, 76-Node SP2 Online by 1996

October 6, 1995

Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- SARA, (Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam), Academic Computing Services of Amsterdam recently announced that it has pur Read more…

Cray Delivers J916 Compact Supercomputer to Solvay Chemical

October 6, 1995

Eagan, Minn. -- Cray Research Inc. has delivered a Cray J916 low-cost compact supercomputer and Cray's UniChem client/server computational chemistry software Read more…

NEC Laboratory Reviews First Year of Cooperative Projects

October 6, 1995

Sankt Augustin, Germany -- NEC C&C (Computers and Communication) Research Laboratory at the GMD Technopark has wrapped up its first year of operation. Read more…

Sun and Sybase Say SQL Server 11 Benchmarks at 4544.60 tpmC

October 6, 1995

Mountain View, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Sybase, Inc. recently announced the first benchmark results for SQL Server 11. The result represents a n Read more…

New Study Says Parallel Processing Market Will Reach $14B in 1999

October 6, 1995

Mountain View, Calif. -- A study by the Palo Alto Management Group (PAMG) indicates the market for parallel processing systems will increase at more than 4 Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

SC23 Booth Videos

Achronix @ SC23
AMD @ SC23
AWS @ SC23
Altair @ SC23
CoolIT @ SC23
Cornelis Networks @ SC23
CoreHive @ SC23
DDC @ SC23
HPE @ SC23 with Justin Hotard
HPE @ SC23 with Trish Damkroger
Intel @ SC23
Intelligent Light @ SC23
Lenovo @ SC23
Penguin Solutions @ SC23
QCT Intel @ SC23
Tyan AMD @ SC23
Tyan Intel @ SC23
HPCwire LIVE from SC23 Playlist

CORNELL I-WAY DEMONSTRATION PITS PARASITE AGAINST VICTIM

October 6, 1995

Ithaca, NY --Visitors to this year's Supercomputing '95 (SC'95) conference will witness a life-and-death struggle between parasite and victim, using virtual Read more…

SGI POWERS VIRTUAL OPERATING ROOM USED IN SURGEON TRAINING

October 6, 1995

Surgery simulations to date have largely been created through the development of dedicated applications requiring considerable programming and computer graphi Read more…

U.S. Will Relax Export Restrictions on Supercomputers

October 6, 1995

New York, NY -- U.S. President Bill Clinton has announced that he will definitely relax restrictions on exports of high-performance computers, giving a boost Read more…

Dutch HPC Center Will Have 20 GFlop, 76-Node SP2 Online by 1996

October 6, 1995

Amsterdam, the Netherlands -- SARA, (Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam), Academic Computing Services of Amsterdam recently announced that it has pur Read more…

Cray Delivers J916 Compact Supercomputer to Solvay Chemical

October 6, 1995

Eagan, Minn. -- Cray Research Inc. has delivered a Cray J916 low-cost compact supercomputer and Cray's UniChem client/server computational chemistry software Read more…

NEC Laboratory Reviews First Year of Cooperative Projects

October 6, 1995

Sankt Augustin, Germany -- NEC C&C (Computers and Communication) Research Laboratory at the GMD Technopark has wrapped up its first year of operation. Read more…

Sun and Sybase Say SQL Server 11 Benchmarks at 4544.60 tpmC

October 6, 1995

Mountain View, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Sybase, Inc. recently announced the first benchmark results for SQL Server 11. The result represents a n Read more…

New Study Says Parallel Processing Market Will Reach $14B in 1999

October 6, 1995

Mountain View, Calif. -- A study by the Palo Alto Management Group (PAMG) indicates the market for parallel processing systems will increase at more than 4 Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire